~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Someday this will be over, and I will have succumbed or survived. If it’s the latter, I hope I have something to show for the hours I was forced to spend alone.
This command to “quarantine” should be a walk in the park for me. It is no different from how I live all the time. Freelancers often work alone. As a self-employed freelance writer and editor, I write and edit in solitary confinement. About 70 percent of the time I’m staring out of the window or red-penciling an author’s manuscript or actually writing.
The difference lies in the idle hours of the 30 percent. Pre-shutdown of the world, I spent time with friends over dinner or at the movies or a play; I liked hanging out at the library or taking a class. In those carefree, halcyon hours of memory, I was able to enjoy myself because I was outside myself. Now, my constant companion being me, myself and I, I’ve discovered what a bore I am.
I’m staring out the window. Which isn’t bad – I have a pleasant view. And as of this date, the end of March 2020, we’re still allowed to go outdoors where I live, so I walk a lot. To the store and back every morning, not to get something but just to fool the brain that I have a purpose. Often, I drive somewhere and walk around – the cemetery is quiet, no traffic, no fear of someone coughing on me. The river walk is a good outing. The beaches would be refreshing, but they’re all closed.
Reminds me of a story: the road sign read, “Lake Robbins Closed.” Lake Robbins is a small lake with a dancehall at one end that’s been open for boogying since the 1930s. My parents danced there when they were courting before the war. The Second World War. My husband and I danced there in the 1990s.
The story is this: I was taking my eight-year-old grandson for a car ride when we passed the sign. It took him about five miles of pondering before he came out with it: “Gramma, how do they close a lake?”
I think that of the beaches. Closing miles and miles of beaches seems a daunting task. But the public beaches have parking lots and specific access. Easy enough to close. Private beaches? I suppose those people walk whenever they feel like it. Wild beaches? Surely there are some out there, unchained, but how do I get to them?
These major segues of thinking, such as the Lake Robbins story, are now common in my home aloneness. I swerve from one subject to another as if I’m an ice skater on the bumpy frozen rivers of my mind. Mindlessness gets me through countless hours. But I know that I will look back on this time of the coronavirus and judge myself. In order to be able to pat myself on the back, I need to be proactive, that odd verb of this age, and promo some activity for myself that I might be proud of. Or at least have something to show for the thousands of hours with time in the palms of my hands.
I could start with the small household repairs that I’ve left undone, the easy ones that I can probably handle.
Actually, I can’t think of one right this minute.
I could finish one of the five novels I’ve begun and never completed over my long lifetime. I keep them under the bed.
Hmmm. They used to be under the bed. Must have been a different house.
I could write what I call pome-a-day. I did this after my husband died. For months. It was a satisfying ritual each morning as I sat with my coffee staring out the window. Because I still sit with my coffee staring out the window first thing in the morning, I might as well put the time to good use. Being an American means you have to keep busy.
Bah. I haven’t got one single poem in me, and if I did, it would be bad.
I could paint all those wine glasses that have been accumulating on a shelf in the shed for that purpose.
I don’t feel like it.
I could write snail-mail to friends and family.
Tomorrow.
I could watch an entire night’s worth of movies.
I did that two nights ago – four flicks whose names and characters and plots I can’t recall.
I could help my neighbors. I did ask them. One said, “The only good thing in my week is going to the store. So, no thank you. Do not take away my only pleasure.”
Okay.
I could garden. Digging in the dirt is one of those atavistic endeavors that never fails to feed my soul.
But I have red ants throughout my yard. I can’t be so foolish as to disturb their underground condos. The grouchy little buggers attack.
I tried volunteering at several entities, but so far, none of them want someone as old as I am. I do pro bono editing, which is my usual volunteer work. It is satisfying, but I’ve just realized that, like me, no one else is writing much either. With all the time in the world to write the great American novel, the professed desire of many, many are not doing it.
As I look this essay over, I see that I’m playing the role of spoiled brat in the time of coronavirus. There seems to be no help for it, I think to myself. We’ve been taught whining for the last four years, and it has sunk in. Are we all now snivelers because life isn’t going our way?
A whole new American way of being.
~~~ ~~~
Looking at my situation from that viewpoint, I’m getting to work right now. I cannot sink so low that I snivel beyond this solitary point.
It’s been a long time since I alphabetized my spice cupboard.
Starting right now.
